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both 9-inch and 12-inch diameter Bluefn tion Multi-Aperture Sonar (MAS); the “We can start looking at the data unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) same Removable Data Storage Module straight away,” Stephen said. “When we for the program. (RDSM); and the same 1.9 kWh Li- get the vehicle alongside, we can take

According to Stephen, both the Blue- ion batteries (the Bluefn-9 has one; the the hot-swappable hard disk and the bat- fn-9 and Bluefn-12 vehicles have good Bluefn-12 has four, so the Bluefn-12 tery out, put a new one in, and launch endurance, Stephen said, and yet are can conduct missions of up to 24 hours it again to search a new area,” said Ste- small enough to handle with relative or longer). phen. “Not too many other vehicles that ease. The Bluefn-9 is 2-man portable, The Bluefn vehicles have the ability to can do that. That’s one of the key dif- and can be placed into the water from be confgured with automatic target rec- ferentiators of the Bluefn vehicle, and the boats and retrieved over the transom. ognition using software from SeeByte of why we chose it.”

The larger AUV uses a stern launch and Edinburgh, Scotland, so they can identify Both the Bluefn-9 and Bluefn-12 recovery system on the Steber support mine-like objects onboard the vehicle to use commercial off-the-shelf sensors to boat that has been developed by Thales. create an image of the target, and can collect bathymetric and environmental

Both UUVs are fully autonomous, and return with the data for post processing data, including data on water currents, feature Sonardyne Solstice high-resolu- right on the surface boat. temperature, salinity and turbidity; the

The Bluefn-9 and Bluefun-12 vehicles use the same removable 1.9 KWh Lithium-Ion Battery

The removable 1.9 kWh Li-ion battery can be easily accessed, removed and replaced in-feld in minutes. The battery provides 8 hours of in-water operation, and is fully recharged in 6 hours. The batteries, common across numerous Bluefn UUVs, and are also shippable under UN 38.3. 1 www.marinetechnologynews.com

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